Plummy Dark Rooms

The red-and-purple color scheme in what I call plummy dark rooms has a special impact in these two English living rooms. Red rooms are hardly a novelty, especially in dining rooms. But brining this type of dark hue into the living room feels like a statement about creating an atmosphere for a room that’s used mainly at night. I adore an amethyst sofa (though I will never own one) and it’s hard to do better than the beauty in the sophisticated library by Paolo Moschino [top]. For me it’s just the right shade for plush upholstery and is set off by perfectly-pitched Elizabethan Red walls (from The Paint Library). The black furniture and bookcase, and classic oxblood red ceramic accessories (bowl and table lamp) work the scheme like cherries on a blueberry sundae.

The late fashion editor Isabella Blow used the same colors in her apartment (with help from designer Camilla Guinness) but in reverse! Purple wallpaper with a silvery shimmer hasn’t been seen since Andy Warhol’s heyday in the mid-sixties (unless you’re stripping layers of bedroom wallpaper in an old house). It looks amazing with lipstick red, fuchsia, black and gilded accents.

It’s always serendipity to see two remarkably similar antique rugs (I’ll guess sultanabad or mahal) in unrelated rooms — take a look at these. At first they appear blue but then they begin to all make sense, because when you mix indigo (blue) with red and the result, always, is the color of a plum.

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